1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for processing a Job for case binding, and a method for controlling the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the commercial printing industry, by receiving an order requesting creation of a printed matter (such as a magazine, newspaper, catalogue, advertisement and gravure) from a third person (a customer or a client), creating the printed matter desired by the client and delivering it to the client, consideration is obtained from the client. In this commercial printing industry, large-scale printing apparatus, such as an offset plate printing machine, has generally been used.
In the commercial printing industry, works are carried out through various processes. The processes include, for example, job entry, designing and layout, comprehensive layout (presentation by output with a printer), proof reading (layout modification or color modification), proof printing, camera-ready copy creation, printing, post-processing, shipment and the like. The camera-ready copy creation requires a printing machine as described above. Once a camera-ready copy is created, it is not easy to modify it, which is considerably disadvantageous from a viewpoint of cost. This is because careful proof reading, that is, layout checking or color confirmation works, are required.
Thus, a large-scale apparatus is required in the industry of this kind, and a certain amount of time is required to create a printed matter desired by a client. Furthermore, each of these works requires expertise, knowledge and know-how from a skilled worker.
Meanwhile, with increases in the speed and improvement in the quality of electrophotographic printing apparatuses or ink-jet printing apparatuses, a business category called print on demand (POD) appears as a competitor to the printing industry as described above.
POD aims at handling printing processing within a short delivery period without using a large-scale apparatus or system by dividing a job to be handled by a printing apparatus into relatively small jobs. In particular, digital printing using electronic data is realized by taking full advantage of digital image forming apparatus such as digital copying machines and a digital complex machine instead of the large-scale printing machine or printing approach as described above. A POD market is being developed. In this POD market, digitalization has been promoted in comparison with the conventional printing industry, and management and control with the use of a computer is spreading. Thereby, the level is coming close to the level of the printing industry.
With this background, there has been developed a print for pay (PFP) printing service by a copy/print shop or a printing company centralized reproduction department (CRD).
At a POD printing site, an image forming apparatus such as a printer and a copying machine, an image input apparatus such as a scanner, and equipment such as post-processing apparatuses for performing processings, such as binding, stapling, cover attaching, gluing, punching and case binding, are connected with one another via a network. Print processing for a print job generated on a client computer connected to the network or a print job inputted via the Internet is performed with the use of the equipment.
At such a printing site, in most cases, one or more workers (operators) are arranged to manage devices and print job processes. For example, they carry outputted sheets to an offline finisher to perform stapling, collation and the like individually for them, or they use a so-called inline finisher connected to the image forming apparatus to perform post-processing works and the like.
There are various kinds of post-processings as stated before. For example, case binding processing will be simply described here.
Case binding is a type of bookbinding (finishing) wherein a body portion, constituted by sheets which are commonly printed on both sides, is covered with one sheet, which is to be a cover, and bound, as shown in FIGS. 1A to 1C. FIG. 1A shows an example of a cover. Commonly, a cover which is a little larger than twice the sheet size of the body portion is used. In the example of FIG. 1A, images are printed on the backside of the cover, and each image is to be shown on the inside of the cover when the book is opened. In the example of FIG. 1A, the cover is formed with one sheet, with a portion to be a back strip included therein. In this case, it is useless to place an image on the back strip portion because glue binding or the like is performed in bookbinding. It is often desired that no image is placed there for the purpose of increasing the effect of glue binding.
FIG. 1B shows the body portion to be covered with the cover. Each sheet of the body portion is commonly printed on both sides, but single-side printing or N-UP printing is also possible. There may be a case where not simple both-side printing but so-called booklet printing is performed. In this case, after the body portion is divided into thin booklets, all the booklets may be glue-bound together with the cover.
FIG. 1C shows an example of the cover in FIG. 1A and the body in FIG. 1B which have just been glue-bound with each other. In this example, a relatively large sheet size is used for the cover. As shown in this example, commonly, a relatively large cover is created, and three edges of the cover are cut later with the use of a finisher such as an offline finisher. In this example, a cut edge A, a cut edge B and a cut edge C are cut and adjusted.
In order to appropriately perform the post-processing as described above, for example, techniques such as a device communication technique for recognizing what kind of post-processing apparatus is connected and a data control technique for storing image data and enabling the data to be read from a specified data are also involved.
As a technique related to such post-processing, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-195166 discloses a technique for generating, on the PC side, data for a cover in advance separately from a body, and continuously inputting the data for a cover and the data for a body into a printer. In this case, the order of inputting the data for a cover and the data for a body is set for the printer in advance. Therefore, a user who inputs a document has to recognize the position of the cover in the document to be inputted into the system in advance before generating data.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-155152, description is made on how a printed case-binding cover is aligned with a body and folded. However, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-155152 has a problem that a mechanism for automatically distinguishing a cover and a body from each other is not provided, and a user has to manually distinguish a cover and a body from each other, which is a great burden on the user.
As described above, in the example of the current situation, there is a problem that, in the case of processing data for case binding, for example, appropriate processing may not be performed, and an error is caused, or an operator has to re-edit inputted image data.
The problem will be described with reference to FIGS. 2A to 2B. FIG. 2A is a diagram schematically showing the sequence of page data to be case bound. In FIG. 2A, the first page is a cover portion to be the outermost page. The second page is a portion to be placed on the inside of the cover (inside the book). The third and subsequent pages are data of a body portion to be placed in the book.
In the case of a system capable of controlling printing of a cover and a body at the same time, among common case binding machines, the order of the sequence of pages to be printed and bound is determined in advance. Input of data fixed in advance is expected, for example, “the first page is to be created with data of a cover”, “the second page is to be created with data of the inside of the cover”, and “the third and subsequent pages are to be created with data of a body”. It is also necessary to set this same order for a case binding machine and the entire image processing system. Therefore, it is important to strictly set a rule, such as “the first page is to be created with data of a cover, the second page is to be created with the backside of the cover; and the third and subsequent pages are to be created with a body”, in advance.
However, in the case of a print shop and the like, it may be impossible to have a discussion with a customer in advance. Furthermore, a user can carry a sequence of image data into a print shop as a part of provided services, and therefore, it may be unknown in what sequence the image data created by the user are arranged. In such a case, it is conceivable that the sequence does not meet the expectation of an image system which controls case binding.
For example, FIG. 2B shows examples of the conceivable order for different data sequences.
In Type 1, “the first page is to be created with data of a cover; the second page is to be created with data of the inside/backside of the cover; and the third and subsequent pages are to be created with data of a body”.
In Type 2, “the last page is to be created with data of the backside of a cover; the page before the last page is to be created with data of the cover; and the first page to the third page from the last page are to be created with data of a body”.
In Type 3, “the first page is to be created with data of the front side of a front cover; the second page is to be created with data of the backside of the front cover; the last page is to be created with data of a back strip; the second page from the last page is to be created with data of the front side of a back cover; and the third page from the last page is to be created with data of the backside of the back cover”.
Type 4 shows the case where pages for a cover and a body are stored in different files.
As described above, various patterns are conceivable as the page sequence for case binding to be set by the user. Therefore, if data for case binding is inputted without recognition of the configuration and expectation of equipment on the accepting side, there may be caused a problem that desired processing cannot be accomplished, and an error, a request for modification of the sequence of pages or the like is caused. The types shown in FIG. 2B are only examples. Naturally, more page sequence patterns exist, and it is desired to adaptively correspond to each of them.